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To Save the World!
To Save the World! was a superhero TBRPG in the Completely Off Topic forum of the Bionicle fansite BZPower. Through continued expansion by its core members, both in-topic and through side stories, the game endured for nearly six years and contained over six hundred unique characters. Due to continual site hacking and data loss, the game was eventually closed and a sequel, The World in Your Hands, created on a new forum. It was both created and run by The Power that Is. Plot Synopsis The insidious Doctor Danger escaped from Confinement and rallied the Coalition of Corruption, who proceeded to scour the globe looking for new recruits. Mentor put a call out to the League of Salvation, and Heroes from around the globe came together in an attempt to stop this recruitment. Sluice and Silver teamed up to defeat the technopathic cyborg Manchine, while Loadstone, Lionheart, and Plasmafire, aided by a meddling extradimensional being named Cavalier, chased a team of Villains halfway across the world, picking up some of their own recruits along the way. They were all collectively led to the Coalition’s Alpine hideout, where Doctor Danger revealed that he was tired of his plans constantly being foiled, and decided that if he could not rule the world, he would destroy it instead. His master plan had been to bait the League into gathering there so that he could use the ambient Omega Radiation that their powers gave off to fuel a device designed to cause the planet’s core to explode violently. The Heroes teamed up with several Coalition members who had not been privy to the Doctor’s grand scheme to thwart him, but Cavalier’s untimely appearance caused the machine to backfire, leading to a chain reaction that destroyed the mountain instead. Most of those present escaped the blast, but Doctor Danger was among the casualties – the Coalition was rendered leaderless. The Heroes went their separate ways, and the Coalition slipped away to regroup. --------- Sluice and Silver proceeded to return to England, where they were approached by a group of SuperHumans referring to themselves as Mirai's Seven. Led by Haruki Jin, a Japanese cellular regenerant claiming to be over four hundred years old, Mirai’s Seven was a secret organization dedicated to the fulfillment of a prophecy given by Mirai Suisei, an ancient clairvoyant, that stated that a water goddess, born on the cusp of the millennium, would save the world from destruction. After having watched Sluice for many years, they determined that she was the prophesied goddess, and presented her with the Ikusakeme katana, which had once belonged to Mirai. Armed with this knowledge and new weapon, Sluice took Silver to the League Court of Great Britain, where preparations were being made to capitalize on the Coalition’s vulnerable state. They were quickly swept up in a full-blown assault on the Coalition sycophant Ruk van Duff, whose criminal empire was a considerable asset to the Coalition. They successfully arrested the crime lord and a number of his confidants, whose interrogation led to the discovery of a critical Coalition facility hidden in the Gulf of Mexico. Before they could act on this information, however, several of Ruk’s employees attacked the Court, aided by hired Order of Extortion members, and escaped with the crime lord. In the ensuing conflict, Silver lost control of his darker half, and while trying to subdue it inadvertently split it from himself, creating an evil being that referred to itself as “Darkness.” This evil alter-ego swore to destroy Silver’s life before escaping into the night. Wasting no time, the League sent the team to infiltrate the Coalition’s Gulf facility and secure whatever technology and files were being kept there. Bolstered by a number of local Heroes, the group destroyed the facility and recovered years-worth of Coalition records detailing Coalition rosters and hideouts, ultimately dealing a substantial blow to the already unstable organization. The congratulations were short lived, as Loadstone arrived with an urgent request from Mentor – the League was assembling numerous teams to investigate a psychic disturbance in Sydney. When they arrived, they found civilian militias marching across the city, manipulated by Darkmage, a disembodied psychic presence who had recently escaped the mental prison Mentor had placed him in. When the Heroes confronted him, Darkmage cast them into an illusionary world while he actively battled the psychics present. The illusion was of the Kingdom of a Thousand Tears, a future society ruled over by the “Water Goddess” Sluice. Sluice became curious about how this scenario had come about, and managed to discover that, after beginning to disagree with the League’s methods, she had utilized the radiation given off by the same comet that had given Mirai and Haruki their powers to enhance her own abilities, enabling her to destroy the League and conquer the world. She and the other Heroes gradually became drawn into their respective roles in this alternate future, until Silver managed to break the illusion. In a desperate move, Darkmage possessed one of the psychics present, Tiger Lily, and attempted to utilize her as a hostage to negotiate the terms of his ‘surrender.’ Tiger Lily managed to wrest control away from Darkmage long enough to plead for her own death, thus ending both her suffering and Darkmage’s threat. The Heroes refused to oblige, but Sluice, not having fully recovered from her imagined stint as ruler of the world, argued that Darkmage was a threat they needed to eradicate, and gave permission to a participating villain to respect Tiger Lily’s final wish and kill her. With Darkmage destroyed, Sydney was freed, and the Heroes all parted again, on much shakier terms. ---------- With the Coalition beginning to fall apart, the Coalition geneticist Aquarius found that his research was no longer being funded. Frustrated and afraid that he might have lost the financial security the Coalition provided him to further his study of diagenetics, Aquarius attempted to persuade Midnight to elect himself leader of the Coalition and bring the organization back together, believing him to be one of the few influential Coalition members with the resources to keep the organization from fracturing further. Midnight was too subtle to place himself in such a conspicuous position, however. When he refused, Aquarius knocked him unconscious and, out of desperation, cloned him, programming the clone with the ambition to lead the Coalition and to take cues from Aquarius, should it need to. This new Midnight orchestrated a mass escape from the London League Penitentiary, and the resulting band of vengeful SuperVillains took the League Court of Great Britain hostage. Several Heroes were sent to defuse the situation, among them Lionheart, but without really knowing what was going on they only managed to escalate it into a massive three-way battle between the League, the Coalition, and the SuperVillains Midnight was trying to press-gang into service. Midnight used the battle as a distraction, kidnapping a number of Heroes and confiscating League records before planting a bomb that ultimately destroyed the base. The League had been dealt a blow similar to what they had done with Ruk van Duff’s crime syndicate, and Midnight had become a beacon of strength that the Coalition could now gather around. Hoping to further increase his influence, Midnight sent several Villains to New York City and Kyoto, Japan to recover the two halves of an ancient Egyptian amulet known as the Eye of Ra. They succeeded in stealing one half from a museum in New York, but alerted the League to their plot; Loadstone lead a group of Heroes to visit his uncle Historian, whose life’s work was the study of ancient SuperHuman cultures. Though Historian was more interested in showing off a series of ruins he was excavating at the peak of Mount Olympus, he deigned to inform the group that ancient Egypt had been presided over by a society of advanced SuperHumans in antiquity; that civilization fell apart due to an unnamed menace, paving the way for normal humans to have founded the Old Kingdom. The Eye of Ra was rumored to be the key to locating the remains of that lost civilization and, hypothetically, the cause of its destruction. Meanwhile, Sluice and Silver had traveled to Japan, in order to more thoroughly research Mirai and the Ikusakeme. They learned that Mirai had been a warlord in feudal Japan, rising to great prominence in the early 1600s before his sudden decline in health and resultant death. They also found mention of Ikusen Sakeme, a rival warlord who committed suicide and whose name seemed oddly similar to the Ikusakeme. Before they were able to discover more, they intercepted Origami, a Coalition member attempting to flee with half of the Eye of Ra, and Jack Frost, an exiled Canadian SuperHero who was attempting to stop him. The three easily defeated Origami and, after having gleaned as much information from him as they could, Sluice and Jack agreed that he should be killed, being a highly dangerous member of a worldwide crime syndicate. Much to Silver’s dismay, Jack froze him to death, and subsequently decided to follow the two, having nowhere else to go. With only half of the Eye of Ra in his possession, Midnight stormed off to Japan, forcibly taking the other half of the amulet before fleeing with his prize. Along the back of the completed amulet was an inscription that led Midnight and a team of Coalition members to Luxor, Egypt, with both groups of Heroes hot in pursuit. They found a temple there, and used the Eye of Ra to activate an ancient mechanism that dispersed an enormous plot of sand far to the northwest, revealing the ruins of an extremely ancient city with a pyramid at its heart. Both the League and the Coalition reached the ruins concurrently, and as they fought through the deserted streets several members of both parties slipped into the pyramid to investigate further. A search through the passageways of the pyramid revealed that it was something of an ancient palace, and in its depths they found Anubis, an archaic SuperHuman who had inspired myths of the deity of the same name. Anubis related to them the untold story of his forgotten society – that thousands of years ago, he had been part of a band of SuperHumans who had traveled throughout Egypt, performing “miracles” with their powers and commanding the people's respect. As one of the most advanced societies of the age, they had been visited by an alien race, who bestowed upon them vast technologies and helped them establish the city the Coalition had just discovered. But when one immortal SuperHuman, Anubis’ protégé Ankkamun, grew mad with power and attempted to establish himself as ruler of all Egypt, the ancient SuperHumans locked him into an eternal coma, entombing his body at the heart of the palace and obscuring the city with the advanced alien technology and cloaking devices at their disposal. Anubis had been left to guard Ankkamun, and had kept aware of the world outside only by way of several surveillance satellites the aliens had left in orbit before they departed. Midnight forced his way into Ankkamun’s burial chamber, and utilized his psychic powers to awaken the decrepit Villain. Ankkamun was initially confused, but Midnight managed to convey his intentions of Ankkamun joining the Coalition, of which the Egyptian had no interest. His only concern was finding the Book of Power, a mysterious artifact that had granted him almost unlimited abilities in the past (which was in truth Midnight’s ultimate goal). With such a threat looming, the Coalition teamed up with the League in an attempt to stop Ankkamun, but their collective presence only made him stronger, and he managed to regain the book, restoring him to a more youthful, regenerated form. Empowered, Ankkamun, proclaiming himself “the Pharaoh,” engaged in a one-on-one duel with Omega, the only Hero present who also grew stronger the more ambient Omega Radiation was present. The Pharaoh eventually realized he was no match for Omega, but before he could escape the Heroes managed to subdue him, with Anubis placing him back in a coma and confiscating the Book of Power. The Coalition escaped in the aftermath, and the Heroes dispersed before archeologists and news crews descended on the city, eager to learn what the ruins were and had transpired there. ---------- Fade was contacted by future heroines to avert an international superwar planned by Canadian dictator Gladiatrix. The heroes discovered that Gladiatrix was excavating an extradimensional prison that she was going to attempt to utilize as a weapon of mass destruction. Heroes thwarted her and secured the artifact, sending Gladiatrix to Confinement. Fade returned to New York, where he found Isobel Steele in his father’s old lab. She was promptly kidnapped by Frigid, Fade’s old flame who he believed dead. Heroes pulled together to prevent her from activating the Omega Supercharger, which was destroyed along with Frigid and (apparently) Fade. Sluice’s life seemed to be spiraling downwards. Her recent heroics had kept her from her day job, from which she was fired. A manifestation of Silver’s inner evil, dubbed ‘Darkness,’ teamed up with Sluice’s nemesis Rush to publicly reveal Sluice’s identity - the two were mobbed by supervillains wanting vengeance. She became increasingly bitter, and more absorbed by the Ikusakeme. She eventually slipped away from Silver and disappeared; several members of Mirai’s Seven discovered a betrayal among their number, but only too late. Sluice, now under heavy influence by the spirit of Ikusen Sakeme that resided in the Ikusakeme, teamed up with the Twister to create a machine that would allow Sakeme to absorb the Omega Radiation of a passing comet and become virtually invincible. Many heroes came together to thwart them in an epic battle, and eventually succeeded in destroying Sakeme’s consciousness for good – but not before he promised to warp Sluice’s mind permanently. The Coalition’s fall had left a power vacuum that many attempted to fill. Professor Pyro launched an attack on the peaceful and relatively unknown Underwater Nation of Atlantea; the Atlanteans thought this an attack by the human race at large, but were talked down by the United Nations. The technopathic cyborg Manchine had salvaged Doctor Danger’s head from the destroyed base where he had perished, and recruited a number of Confinement escapees under the banner of the “New Coalition.” The Coalition founder Renaissance activated an old supersoldier experiment named Knucklebones to attempt to wipe out his competition and allow him to oversee the reconstruction of the Coalition, though he eventually joined with Manchine. But the most prominent was Midnight, who pulled from his personal finances to fund a new headquarters and the creation of an army of genetic hybrids known as “Sharkmen.” He issued an attack on the city of Rio de Janeiro while demanding a meeting with world leaders; the League double-crossed him, and the “world leaders” were League members in disguise. Midnight was sentenced to Confinement, and his Sharkman army destroyed by League-coordinated efforts. Once again the Coalition was leaderless… The world attempted to settle after the upheaval, but to no avail. With little warning, a massive fleet of alien warships surrounded Earth, flooding from an even bigger Mothership that cast a shadow over half the planet. A near-entirely robotic force known collectively as the Technax Armada, presided over by the alien warlord Technax, hostilely invaded the planet, ordering humans to remain in their homes and neutralizing any resistance forces. Technax had come to demand the Royal Crystal, an immensely powerful extraterrestrial artifact in Silver’s unwitting possession. In the span of a few short weeks, the planet was almost completely subjugated, with only scattered pockets of resistance. One such pocket, a team of supers led by the armored mercenary Dreadnought, infiltrated and destroyed a war factory converting scrap metal into new troops. Silver himself led an assault on the Mothership, which prompted Technax to initiate the Extinction Cannon, an enormous weapon designed to destroy planets and eradicate civilizations. Silver managed to destroy the weapon, but doing so subjected him to lethal amounts of radiation, and the backlash of power from the cannon overwhelmed the Mothership, causing it to explode violently. The Heroes narrowly escaped with their lives, and Silver elected to stay behind to ensure Technax’s demise. The destruction of the Mothership ended the invasion; without any evident chain of command or leadership, the robots were easily subdued, and the world was left to pick up the scattered pieces and continue on. Category:Stories